Measured Building Surveys · NW3 Hampstead
Virtually all of NW3 is conservation area, with many listed villas; Camden's design scrutiny here is at its most demanding.
Camden, covering Hampstead and Belsize Park — and Camden takes longer than almost anywhere. Only 73.8% of its householder decisions landed inside eight weeks, 17.2% ran past thirteen, and 16.8% of applications were withdrawn before any decision. It also holds 1,967 listed buildings, the third highest count in London.
| Measure | Camden | London |
|---|---|---|
| Decided inside eight weeks | 73.8% | — |
| Decided beyond thirteen weeks | 17.2% | — |
| Applications withdrawn before decision | 16.8% | 7.4% |
| Householder approval rate | 88.7% | 83.0% |
| Listed buildings in the register | 1,967 | third most in London |
| Measured survey, floor plans from | £245 | our fixed fee |
Sources: decision figures from MHCLG District Planning Application Statistics (PS1 and PS2), twelve quarters to March 2026; the listed-building register from the MHCLG Planning Data Platform, retrieved 1 September 2026; the survey fee is our own published fixed fee. A survey in NW3 frequently has to record historic fabric as well as dimensions.
Hampstead NW3 — local contextIf the property lies elsewhere in the borough, our page on measured building surveys in Camden covers the same service across the other districts.
A measured survey records the property as it actually is: every wall, opening, level and boundary, at a stated accuracy, as the base everything else gets drawn on. On the older villa and terrace stock through Hampstead, Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage and Frognal, walls are seldom square and floor levels seldom match, so measuring properly at the start is what stops an error reaching Camden's validation team.
Leica Disto and BLK360 point-cloud capture, delivered in AutoCAD and Revit, with an MCIAT chartered technologist answerable for the survey from site through to file.
Across Hampstead, Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage, Frognal in NW3, the dominant property is grand victorian and georgian villas, mansion blocks and large semi-detached houses across hampstead and belsize park. That stock shapes what measured building survey looks like here: the right approach for a period terrace differs from a mansion-block flat or a new-build, and Camden Council judges each on design quality and neighbour impact. We survey the specific Hampstead property, confirm the planning route — Permitted Development, a Lawful Development Certificate, or full planning — and draw a council-ready set tailored to the NW3 streetscape.
Housing stock in NW3: grand Victorian and Georgian villas, mansion blocks and large semi-detached houses through Hampstead and Belsize Park — deep plans, tall storey heights, and roof structures that were never built with habitable rooms in mind.
Within the district: Hampstead, Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage, Frognal.
Streets we know in NW3: Church Row, the Frognal villas, Belsize Park Gardens and the Fitzjohn's Avenue mansions. Each road has its own building line, boundary treatment and precedent that Camden Council weighs when assessing a measured building survey scheme.
Conservation areas: Hampstead, Belsize, Fitzjohns / Netherhall and Swiss Cottage between them cover most of the district. Inside them almost any external alteration needs full planning and a Heritage Statement, which is what makes the accuracy of the existing-condition drawings the thing an application rests on.
Getting around NW3: Hampstead, Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage sit on the Northern and Jubilee lines, with the Overground running across the south of the district.
Property values: £1,000,000 was the middle of 617 NW3 sales in 2025, a district that runs from modest flats to very large houses — useful chiefly as a gauge of what floor area is worth here (HM Land Registry Price Paid, retrieved on 1 September 2026).
Which authority reads the drawings: NW3 is 97.2% Camden by sales, so in all but a handful of cases it is the London Borough of Camden that validates a Hampstead submission. The borough closed 6,122 applications of every description during MHCLG’s twelve reported quarters, 5,640 of them settled by officers rather than by members. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
Borough character: Camden refuses less than London does, and it refuses small schemes no harder than domestic ones. Across 2023-24 to 2025-26 it made 1,179 householder decisions and refused 133 of them, 11.3%. On 2,820 minor applications it refused 289, or 10.2%. Pooled across the 33 boroughs those two figures pull well apart, at 17.0% and 22.1% (MHCLG planning statistics, retrieved 1 September 2026).
A chartered technologist visits the Hampstead property carrying a Leica Disto and a BLK360. On a terrace of two or three bedrooms the site work is usually done within 90 minutes.
Drawn in AutoCAD or Revit at 1:50 or 1:100, to ±3mm. Rooms, openings, fittings and visible services all annotated, so the sheet settles questions rather than raising them.
All four elevations and the cross-sections through the building: the drawings a planning submission, a party wall award and the structural design each depend on.
The BLK360 produces a full point cloud, which earns its keep on the district's period houses, on anything listed, and wherever the geometry is too irregular to tape sensibly.
Deliverables come out in four formats — DWG, RVT, PDF and IFC — which between them cover whatever your engineer, contractor or architect already works in.
An accuracy report to RICS conventions — ±3mm point to point, ±5mm absolute. That is the document a council, an insurer or an appointed party wall surveyor asks for when a dimension is challenged.
Single planning or building-regs submission.
Planning + building regs + structural.
Listed, conservation or complex sites.
Tightly. The Hampstead and Belsize conservation areas contain a great many listed villas, so almost any external change means full planning and frequently Listed Building Consent too, with brick, render, sashes and roofscape each examined in turn. Camden did grant 1,233 listed building consents for alteration or extension out of 1,303 decided over those twelve quarters (MHCLG planning statistics, retrieved 1 September 2026), so careful work gets through. We design to that standard and write the Heritage Statement ourselves.
Sometimes, on the larger plots. Camden's basement policy is restrictive: single storey, with a Basement Impact Assessment covering structure, hydrology and trees. The Frognal and Belsize Park Gardens villas can accommodate one. We draw the scheme and coordinate the engineering and arboricultural reports it must be submitted with.
They can be. The Fitzjohn's Avenue and Belsize blocks generally sit inside conservation areas and carry freeholder consents on top of the planning ones, so an internal reconfiguration can need two approvals before anything external is discussed at all. We draw to satisfy both, and deal with the party wall position between flats.
It means we know how this council's conservation officers read these particular streets. That shapes how a scheme is detailed and how it is argued — which counts for a good deal in a borough where 44.7% of the housing predates 1900 (VOA CTSOP4.1 at 31 March 2025), and where an officer's first question is nearly always about original fabric.
The median residential sale in NW3 during 2025 was £1,000,000, across 617 transactions (HM Land Registry Price Paid, retrieved on 1 September 2026). Against a figure like that the drawing fee is a small line. Camden's own statutory charge sits on top of it and is £548 on a householder application or £610 on a full one. Our drawings are quoted as one fixed price, and the site survey that begins the job costs nothing at any NW3 address.
An NW3 job — Hampstead, Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage, Frognal — normally runs three to four weeks from instruction to submission. Week one is the survey. Weeks two and three are drawings and your revisions. Then comes validation and Camden's determination period, eight weeks for a householder application. We stay on the file through every officer query until a decision lands.
NW3 sits almost entirely in Camden — 97.2% of the district's 2025 property sales fell inside the borough — so Camden decides. The council does operate Article 4 directions. Hampstead, Belsize, Fitzjohns / Netherhall and Swiss Cottage are all designated, and inside them full planning and a Heritage Statement apply. A northern fringe of the district falls into Barnet, so we confirm the determining authority against your exact address before quoting.
Almost always. Openings cut into load-bearing walls, steelwork, a new loft floor, fresh foundations — each needs Building Regulations approval covering structure, means of escape and insulation, going either to Camden's building control team or to an approved inspector. On the terraced and semi-detached parts of NW3 a party wall notice to the neighbours normally has to be served before the steel arrives. Both are coordinated inside the Complete package.
In value terms, usually. With the district's middle sale at £1,000,000 last year, an extra bedroom or a reworked ground floor tends to return more than the work costs. The expensive outcome is the unapproved one: a scheme built without consent, or without a building control sign-off, is what stalls a sale on a house at this price.
Local policy varies more between adjoining boroughs than most owners expect. Full service detail for N6, N19, NW1, NW2, NW5, NW6 and NW8.
Pick a slot that suits you. No obligation and no sales pressure, just straight answers on your planning route.
The NW3 districts we survey in, the stock that dominates each, and the authority a survey eventually feeds an application to. Every amount in the table is a 2026 statutory England planning fee, never a survey price.
| Postcode | Area | Dominant stock | What it means for a measured building survey |
|---|---|---|---|
| NW3 | Hampstead / Belsize Park | Georgian and Victorian villas, listed buildings | NW3 covers Hampstead / Belsize Park only; Camden Council handles the measured building survey. |
| NW3 | Hampstead | Georgian and Victorian villas, listed buildings | Hampstead itself sits in NW3, so Camden decides, with a designated boundary running through much of the district. |
| NW3 | Belsize Park | Edwardian mansion blocks, Victorian villas | Belsize Park lies inside NW3, and a survey there feeds an application that Camden alone will determine. |
| NW3 | Swiss Cottage | Mansion blocks, post-war flats | Swiss Cottage is within NW3 as well; proposals from these streets go to Camden and are read against its conservation guidance. |
| N1C | King's Cross | Modern apartments, converted warehouses | Adjoining district to NW3. Surveying needs no consent here either — Camden has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| N6 | Highgate | Georgian villas, Victorian and Edwardian semis | Adjoining district to NW3. Surveying needs no consent here either — Camden has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| NW1 | Camden Town / Regent's Park | Victorian terraces, mansion blocks | Adjoining district to NW3. Surveying needs no consent here either — Camden has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
Pitch, wall construction and plot depth can change inside a couple of streets here, and every one of those changes alters what a survey has to record before design work can start.
Designations covering NW3: Camden Council runs 40 conservation areas, and the ones owners in this district meet are Hampstead, Belsize, Fitzjohns / Netherhall and Swiss Cottage. A property inside one loses its permitted development rights. The submission is then a householder application costing £548 with an eight-week clock, rather than a £249 prior approval settled in six. On the Hampstead streets it is the front elevation an officer looks at first, which is precisely what a survey has to get right.
What Article 4 removes near NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park): Article 4 removes permitted development for HMO conversions (C3 to C4) across the borough, plus restrictions on basement extensions in 12 conservation areas. Before pricing a measured building survey we check whether the NW3 address is inside the mapped area, because Camden Council draws the NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park) boundary street by street rather than across the whole of NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park).
Digging below a NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park) property: Camden's basement policy (Policy A5) restricts single-storey basements to 50% of garden area; double-storey basements generally refused outside commercial zones. Where a measured building survey in NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park) involves excavation that is read beside the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, which needs two months notice for a NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park) dig within 3 m of a neighbour, and Camden Council expects the NW3 ground conditions addressed in the application.
What NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park) is built from: Victorian and Edwardian terraces, Georgian townhouses in Bloomsbury and Hampstead, post-war mansion blocks, modern developments in King's Cross. Creative, affluent in Hampstead and Primrose Hill; dense mixed-use around Camden Town and Kings Cross; academic character in Bloomsbury. That mix decides the measured building survey route in NW3 (Hampstead / Belsize Park) more than the postcode does, and it is what a Camden Council case officer reads first. A householder application costs £548 paid to Camden Council direct, with 8 weeks to a decision once validated.
Sources for this NW3 measured building survey page: borough policies maps and conservation-area registers (2025–26), Royal Mail postcode district boundaries, the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications) (England) Regulations, the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 as amended, and the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
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